to the pervasive poverty in the town. The great famine in the Ore Mountains in 1771 and 1772 claimed roughly 650 lives in Johanngeorgenstadt. Already in 1651 in today's constituent community of Wittigsthal, an ironworks had come into service, and by 1828, Carl Gotthilf Nestler (1789–1864) had set up Saxony's first fully functional iron plate rolling mill in the Haberlandmühle. In the 19th century also began the production of lace bands and as of 1860, of leather gloves. On 19 August 1867, a devastating great fire destroyed 287 of the town's 355 houses and claimed seven adults’ and five children's lives. 20th century Germany's first ski jump was built in 1929 near Johanngeorgenstadt. It bore the name “Hans-Heinz-Schanze”. In 1934, the formerly abandoned mining industry was taken up again. In the Second World War, with the seizure of owner Arthur Krautmann's “Deutsches Haus” hotel across from the railway station, the town became home to a military hospital. Furthermore, the town harboured a subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp in which countless inmates died. Its prisoners were used as forced labour and were deported mostly from German-occupied Soviet Union, Poland and France. The Johanngeorgenstadt camp was emptied on 13 April 1945 and the inmates were sent on a death march towards Theresienstadt. Following World War II, the town was part of East Germany until 1990. Beginning in 1945, through the founding of SAG Wismut and later SDAG Wismut (Sowjetisch-Deutsche Aktiengesellschaft Wismut – Soviet-German Bismuth Corporation) uranium mining underwent growth that was both rapid and without much regard to the effects on either human beings or on the environment. A great deal of the Old Town had to be torn down between 1953 and 1960 owing to mining damage, and new residential areas were built. From 1952 to 1957, Johanngeorgenstadt was a district unto itself, but after this the town was integrated with the district of Schwarzenberg (now Aue-Schwarzenberg). The closure that began in 1990 of many businesses, such as the glove, textile and furniture industries as well as machine building led to a great fall in the town's population to levels below those before the war. This in turn led to the demolition of many empty factories and residential blocks (especially in Neuoberhaus, Pachthaus and the midtown). These measures even affected one of the town's few cultural monuments: The mining warehouse building, built between 1806 and 1812 and spared by the